


My Mind Is A Safe

by sophia_sol



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Community: kink_bingo, Crack, Gen, Mind Control
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-15
Updated: 2011-09-15
Packaged: 2017-10-23 18:19:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/253436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophia_sol/pseuds/sophia_sol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a reason Patrick always wears a hat, and it is not the reason you think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Mind Is A Safe

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to justice_turtle for betaing!
> 
> I presume I'm not the only one who's noticed Patrick's new hatlessness. And then, although I managed to scare away the looming epic plot, I couldn't stop myself writing crackfic about it. I'm so sorry.

There is a reason Patrick always wears a hat, and it is not the reason you think.

* * *

 _Photo album; Patrick and his headgear through the ages:_

Photo: Patrick, a toddler, standing in a living room and carefully balancing a teddy bear on his head. Both hands are required to keep it from falling off. His face is a study in concentration.

Photo: Patrick, a small child, standing on a porch dressed in a pirate costume, grinning and threatening the camera with a plastic sword. On his head perches a tricorn hat with a very large feather.

Photo: Patrick, a sullen preteen, glares at someone not in view, a colourful knit hat with a bobble on top pulled low over his ears as snow swirls around him.

Photo: Patrick, a teenager, wearing a trucker's hat.

Photo: Patrick, a teenager, wearing a baseball cap.

Photo: Patrick, a teenager, wearing a fedora.

Photos: Patrick, through his teen years and into his twenties, wearing an endless succession of hats. In at least one photo he is punching someone who is reaching for his hat.

Photo: Patrick, with nothing on his head except his hair.

* * *

The hat-wearing phase had begun abruptly. Contrary to popular belief, it began before his hair started thinning.

If you were to successfully remove a hat from his head -- and you wouldn't, because Patrick has always been unusually defensive of his hats -- you would discover that his hats all share a common alteration.

They are all carefully lined with aluminum foil.

* * *

Patrick remembers the day clearly, but tries not to dwell on it. He doesn't like to think of how it felt to not be under his own control, to try to make himself sit down and find his body walking confidently onward without his consent. It was a...weird, almost blissful experience, and he felt like nothing mattered, like everything was okay, like he could let go of all his worries and relax.

The moment he found himself released, he dashed for his computer to do research into ways to protect himself from mind-control. Enjoyable as the experience had been while it was going on, as soon as it was over it _creeped him out_. Foil caps seemed the popularly agreed-upon method, and so Patrick's hat-wearing days began.

It's worked for years. Not once since he was fourteen has he been troubled by mind-control. So when he comes across [a study proving the ineffectiveness of foil hats](http://berkeley.intel-research.net/arahimi/helmet/), he finds himself thinking that maybe the mind-control he experienced as a teenager was a one-time event, an aberration. Maybe his carefully-cultivated hat habit has been unnecessary, if the study is right about the uselessness of the hats.

He reaches up, pauses for a moment, screws up his courage and then snatches his hat from his head. He runs his fingers through his hair nervously, then fires up GarageBand to distract himself.

Music is always a good distraction.

* * *

Patrick's thoughts sharpen abruptly and uncomfortably. He is suddenly alert, more alert than he has been in many months, and standing in front of him with a strangely worried expression on his face is Pete. Patrick reaches up uncertainly, and finds a hat on his head. He knows he didn't put it there.

He has been _betrayed_.

He has been forcibly removed from the happy floaty mental state he has been occupying and it is all Pete's fault. How dare he?

Patrick attacks.

The hat fails to fall off in the fray that ensues, but Patrick cannot free himself from his anger long enough to pull it off. And slowly, slowly, as Patrick works to get his anger under control again, he finds himself remembering that despite the pleasantness, living under the influence of mind control isn't actually the best idea. He doesn't even really know what's happened while he's been in the backseat of his own life.

Pete was right to put a hat back on him. The knowledge cools the rest of his anger, and he stops trying to punch Pete. He sits down on the floor, trusting Pete to understand, and after a short pause Pete joins him.

"So," Pete says.

"Yeah," Patrick says.

"You've been ignoring me for months," Pete says.

"Yeah," Patrick says.

"I couldn't figure out what was going on, until I broke into your house and examined your hat collection," Pete says.

"Yeah," Patrick says.

"This better not happen again," Pete says.

"Yeah," Patrick says. "I'm sorry," Patrick says. "It won't," Patrick says.

It doesn't.

And if Patrick occasionally spares a moment to think wistfully of how nice it would feel, nobody has to know.


End file.
